DARLINGTON, S.C. — Another NASCAR Xfinity Series race that was seemingly in Sheldon Creed’s grasp wriggled free again Saturday at Darlington Raceway. If there was some odd form of consolation for the 26-year-old driver, he at least didn’t add to his distinctive record of runner-up placements without a win.
“I’m glad I didn’t run second again,” Creed said. “At this point, I’ll run third before I run second.”
Creed led 30 of the 150 laps in Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help A Hero 200, falling short after a slightly slower stop in the final pit cycle dropped him from the lead to third place in the order. That’s where he finished in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, behind Cup Series regular and race winner Christopher Bell and runner-up Cole Custer, who nearly tangled with Bell in their heated contest for the lead with a lap and a half remaining.
Creed’s 93rd career start in the Xfinity Series seemed to be headed for a breakthrough, especially after he methodically chased down Bell’s No. 20 JGR Supra to grab the lead with nine laps left in regulation. A late caution flag, however, tilted the race’s complexion after AJ Allmendinger crunched the outside retaining wall on Lap 143, one lap after contact with Custer.
That yellow flag set up overtime and a last round of pit service. Creed entered pit road with the lead, but left third after a slight lag on the right-rear tire change, landing him on the second row for the last restart.
“I was optimistic at first, right?” said Creed, a two-time Darlington winner in Truck Series competition. “My pit crew had been really good all day, and I just figured we would come in first and leave first, and I needed to at least probably be on the front row for a green-white-checkered like that. … I don’t know. I’m obviously really bummed because today was our day, and I felt like I put in one of my best performances, and yeah, to have a caution like that ruin it, it sucks.”
Bright spots persisted for the No. 18 team, even with the heartache of Saturday’s Darlington finish. Creed added to his series-best mark with his 10th top-five finish of the year, and the No. 18 pit crew had registered two of the three fastest times on pit road before the fateful final stop.
“I think just we are going to hang our hats on how fast we were the whole race, that we got better throughout the day,” No. 18 crew chief Sam McAulay told NASCAR.com. “Stage 3, clearly the best car, and Sheldon did a great job, passed the 20 really well. I mean, I think the pit crew on average for the day is still like probably P1, P2. They’ve been great. That’s just part of it, when you get a late caution like that. But I mean, we just have to keep putting ourselves in the top five. … We keep doing that, keep bringing good cars, I know it’s coming soon, but it definitely stings to have a car pulling away and then finish third, but it’s part of racing.”
The collision between the two front-runners in Bell and Custer was almost the flashpoint that could have opened the door for Creed. Bell said post-race that he thought his car was about to nose into the inside wall after the two came together, but both he and Custer straightened it out to stay 1-2.
“It was just really tight racing,” said Custer, who leaves Darlington second in the series standings — 28 points behind Justin Allgaier, Saturday’s 10th-place finisher. “It is always fun to race with Christopher. We were both just trying to stay in the throttle off of Turn 2. I couldn’t tell if he came down or I came up a little bit. It was a hard decision to make because he was coming down and I didn’t know if I should lift or stay in it and let him wreck himself. I think if I had stayed in it, I would have wrecked myself. It was a great race by everyone on our team. To come from 21st to second is a huge accomplishment. I can’t thank everyone enough, especially the pit crew. The pit crew did a great job.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Christopher Bell survived a near-disaster with Cole Custer on the first lap of overtime and held on to win Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200 over Custer and snakebit Sheldon Creed.
During a green-flag run that started on lap 97 of 150, Creed caught and passed Bell for the lead on Lap 139 and was poised to claim his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory after a record 11 runner-up finishes in the series.
But Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger slapped the outside wall on Lap 143, causing the sixth caution of the afternoon, and Creed lost the top spot with a slow 15-second stop on pit road, thanks to issues with the right-rear tire.
Creed restarted third behind Bell in the outside lane. Contact between the cars of Bell and Stewart-Haas Racing’s Custer on the backstretch got both cars out of shape below the normal racing line, but the drivers recovered and held their positions.
“That was wild, for sure,” said Bell, who started from the pole and led 108 laps. “I thought I was headed nose-first into the inside wall… It’s a tough race track, and off of (Turn) 2, whether you’re on the bottom of the top, it flushes you to the wall, and then you kind of get a little bit of a wiggle coming down.
“Once again, I feel terrible for Sheldon, to essentially win the race on the long run there and then lose it on pit road. It’s a big bummer … It seemed like our car was really good on the short runs. Obviously, the 18, Sheldon, was really good on the long runs.
“Unfortunately for him, the race played out differently, and fortunately for us, we got another shot at it.”
The victory was Bell’s second of the season in as many starts, with the first victory having come at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in June. But Bell’s triumph came at the expense of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate.
As expected, Creed was disconsolate as he reflected on the race that got away.
“I lost one the same way a few years ago here,” lamented Creed, who led 30 laps and was pulling away from Bell before the final caution. “This has been a really good place for me. I’ve always loved racing here. Man, I don’t know if we could be any better than that.
“I felt like I put in one of my best performances today … Man, it’s a bummer. I’m so proud of everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing on this 18 team. I took a chance on myself and brought all the money we could. I’m literally not even making a dollar this year.”
Creed will leave Joe Gibbs Racing to drive a Ford for the Haas Factory Team next year.
NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Elliott finished fourth, followed by Sammy Smith, who leap-frogged Ryan Sieg into the final playoff-eligible position on points. Smith leads Sieg by 10 points with three races left in the Xfinity regular season.
Jesse Love, Shane van Gisbergen, Chandler Smith, Austin Hill and Justin Allgaier completed the top 10.
Creed did pick up his first stage win of the season, beating Bell to the finish line in Stage 2. Bell won the opening 45-lap stage over Hill.
The Xfinity Series returns to action Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Focused Health 250 at 3 p.m. ET (USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Xfinity Series garage at Darlington concluded without issue, confirming Bell as the race winner.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel for impending free agent Harrison Burton, after last Saturday’s dramatic victory at Daytona International Speedway launched him into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Though Burton can’t be specific at this point, he is optimistic about his future.
“I think I’ll be a race car driver next year, so that’s great,” Burton said Wednesday during a celebration of the victory at the Wood Brothers shop in Mooresville, North Carolina. “I don’t know where exactly, or what series — I don’t know. I think it’s all fluid.
“I feel like (I’m getting) close to where I feel good about a couple things. I feel like I’m in a place now where the places I’m going to go in the future want me and genuinely want me as a race car driver to go and help them try to win races.”
Burton passed Kyle Busch for the lead on the final lap at Daytona and won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 by 0.047 seconds. He has mixed feelings about watching the video of the final two overtime laps.
“Not a ton, honestly, mostly ‘cause I hate the way my voice sounds on my radio when I scream,” Burton said when asked how many times he had watched the replay. “I don’t know why — it just bothers me …
“(Broadcaster) Leigh Diffey had a pretty awesome call of it. He’s like setting up the Kyle Busch story, ‘He hasn’t won since 2008,’ and then it’s like, ‘Here comes Harrison Burton out of nowhere.’ That was cool.”
In the booth with Diffey was Burton’s father, serving as a race analyst for NBC Sports.
“I did like to listen a few times to see what my dad said, and he was pretty quiet up there, which is typical of my dad in the booth whenever I’m racing,” Harrison Burton said. “He tries very hard to be unbiased.
“Then I see the video of him muting his mic and almost punching Leigh Diffey, fist-pumping.”
Legacy Motor Club driver Erik Jones comes to Darlington ranked 26th in the championship standings, yet he is as optimistic about this weekend as he could possibly be to pull off a walk-off home run of sorts and win to earn his championship chance. Two of his three career NASCAR Cup Series victories have come in the Southern 500.
A victory Sunday night would be Jones’ first top five of the season in the No. 43 Toyota. His best showing is eighth place in the season-opening Daytona 500 — his only top 10 of 2024. He was fastest in Group A practice Saturday but will start the race 28th after dipping in qualifying.
“It’s just been a long year for a lot of different reasons,” Jones said. “But I think if you told me I had to pick one track other than a superspeedway, I’d probably pick Darlington to go win.
“Definitely some confidence in that. I think any time you come to a place you’ve had success a few times with different groups, you have the notes to dive into and the confidence you know how to get around the place and do what you need to do.
“It’s not going to be easy by any stretch, but I feel like we have a good plan.”
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
Kyle Busch is another former Darlington winner capable of pulling off a victory that would propel him into the playoffs. The driver of the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet has scored top-five finishes in the last two races — including a season-best runner-up showing at Daytona last week — but he still sits in 19th place, 106 points below the current playoff elimination line.
A three-race winner last year with RCR, Busch’s team has struggled in 2024 with only four top-five runs. But Darlington has traditionally been a solid venue for him. He won here in 2008 and has a pair of runner-up finishes (2017, 2020). He’s scored top-10 finishes in more than half his starts (14 times in 25 races) and had a run of 11 top-10 runs in 14 races between 2010-21.
“This race in the spring, we did not run well, but we don’t come in this weekend holding our heads low and thinking that we’re going to not run well again,” said Busch, who finished 27th in April. “We put our heads to paper and try to figure out why and said we’re going to go there with the best piece we can and try to kick their butt and get a win.”
Bubba Wallace sped to the Busch Light Pole Award, with a speed of 167.146 mph, securing his 23XI Racing Toyota a pivotal top starting position in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 as he seeks a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. Carson Hocevar earned a career-best second-place starting spot in the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
Two-time Southern 500 winner Erik Jones posted the fastest lap in Saturday’s practice session at 166.461 mph in the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota. Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman and Front Row Motorsports’ Todd Gilliland were quickest in 10-lap averages. | Full Saturday recap
Big story line
The swings that make a season
Twenty-five races have led us to the regular-season finale, a 500-mile showdown at one of NASCAR’s fiercest tracks with just three spots left to claim in the Cup Series Playoffs grid.
At least two spots will be claimed based on points, positioning Martin Truex Jr. (58 points above the elimination line) and Ty Gibbs (plus-39) in the most comfortable positions heading into the Southern 500. That puts Chris Buescher — 21 markers above the line — in the provisional final spot in the 16-driver bracket, with Bubba Wallace (minus-21), Ross Chastain (minus-27) and Kyle Busch (minus-106) eager to cut in line.
Before Sunday’s ultimate battle, a look at the swings that have Buescher, Wallace, Chastain and Busch on the brink of either playoff glory or regular-season heartbreak:
Chris Buescher: Kansas, Darlington spring Details: If Chris Buescher misses the postseason one year after a three-win campaign in 2023, a simple two-week stretch in May will serve as the stinging what-if. Buescher was 0.001 seconds away from a playoff-clinching victory on May 5 at Kansas Speedway, falling short to Kyle Larson in the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history. In other words, no one ever came closer to winning a Cup race without claiming the checkered flag than Buescher.
One week later, Buescher was back in the hunt for another victory and leading with 10 laps to go over Tyler Reddick and Brad Keselowski — all until Reddick’s dive-bomb move into Turn 3 walled Buescher. The damaged plummeted Buescher from a minimum third-place finish down to 30th in the final rundown, a difference of 27 points that could become pivotal in determining Sunday night’s playoff outcome.
Bubba Wallace: Richmond spring, Michigan
Details: While Bubba Wallace hasn’t been as close to victory as Buescher this year, these races jump out as collective missed opportunities for the No. 23 team. A late-race battle for fourth with Kyle Larson at Richmond Raceway resulted in Larson spinning across Wallace’s nose after the No. 5 Chevrolet slid loose and slowed ever so slightly. The resulting caution cued pit stops, with Wallace falling from the top five with two laps left in regulation to a 13th-place finish in overtime, costing him at least eight points.
At Michigan, Wallace’s 23XI Racing machine was blazing fast, leaving Denny Hamlin and Larson in the dust while charging to the lead early. But a Stage 2 crash at Lap 116 upended his day, triggered when Larson spun on corner exit with Wallace and the field behind with nowhere to go. Wallace nursed his battered car home in 26th, one lap down. The total point loss for Wallace is tougher to quantify since over 40% of the race remained at the time of his crash. But given his early speed, 14 fastest laps per loop data and early running position, a 10th-place run is reasonable to estimate — meaning his 26th-place finish cost him at least 16 points. Coupled with the points lost from Richmond, those 24 points could be the difference from a postseason berth.
Ross Chastain: Texas, Nashville, Michigan
Details: Though Ross Chastain’s laps led are down significantly in 2024 — 175 compared to 640 led in 2023 and 692 in ’22 — Texas and Nashville leap out as exceptions this year. The No. 1 Trackhouse Racing driver led 33 laps at Texas and was second in overtime on the white-flag lap. But a slip high in Turn 2 led William Byron to his rear bumper, turning Chastain on the backstretch, resulting in a 32nd-place finish — a 30-point swing in one corner.
Nashville echoed the same pain. Chastain was passed for the lead late by Hamlin and was cruising to a runner-up day before a late Austin Cindric spin sent the event to overtime. Lined up second on the restart, Chastain was crashed after contact from Larson and finished 33rd — this time, a 31-point swing.
Michigan netted a 13-point loss in overtime for Chastain. Restarting 12th, Chastain charged up the outside down the backstretch but became collateral damage when Alex Bowman hit the wall, creating a stack-up that sent Chastain spinning into the grass, where he got stuck and lost a lap, finishing 25th instead. In all, three overtime periods may have cost Chastain 74 points and may ultimately restrict him from the playoffs.
Kyle Busch: Atlanta, Daytona
Details: In a season full of tough moments for Kyle Busch, no what-if stands out more than Race No. 2 of 2024 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet finished third by 0.007 seconds in a three-wide finish behind race winner Daniel Suárez and Ryan Blaney. Busch has totaled 25 more points than Suárez this season, but Suárez’s victory seals him a spot in the postseason, while Busch enters a must-win situation at Darlington to advance.
Busch was painfully close to finishing the job last week at Daytona, but an improbable run by Harrison Burton and Parker Retzlaff propelled Burton to the win instead — by just 0.047 seconds over Busch. So while Buescher, Wallace and Chastain all left points on the table, a total of 0.054 seconds may separate Busch from another playoff run.
Alex Slitz | Getty Images
History tells us…
The postseason grid may not change Sunday night. According to Racing Insights, only twice in the elimination-style playoffs has a driver raced his way into the playoffs in the final race of the regular season. Ryan Newman did so in 2019 on points, and Austin Dillon won at Daytona in the 2022 finale.
He may not be the betting favorite to win, but watch out for…
ERIK JONES. It shouldn’t be very surprising to see Jones’ name pop up here. Although Jones and the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team have struggled to just one top 10 all season, Darlington is a track at which Jones has always excelled, scoring two Southern 500 triumphs, five top fives and eight top 10s in 13 starts. | Darlington odds
Speed reads
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• Mark your calendars: 2025 schedules unveiled for Cup, Xfinity and Craftsman Truck series | Read article
• International territory: Cup ventures to Mexico City in ’25 in milestone event | Read article
• Reddick rising: On chasing Regular Season Championship with Jordan, Woods and Gretzky on hood | Read article
• Wallace on stakes at Darlington: ‘I need to portray the best race that I’ve ever had in my career’ | Read article • Past Darlington winners talk position: Kyle Busch, Erik Jones angle for playoff bids | Read article
• Burton on racing future: ‘I think I’ll be a race car driver next year’ | Read article
• Three Xfinity teams penalized: Nos. 27, 28, 45 teams levied L1-level penalties after Daytona | Read article • Power Rankings: Will Elliott, Larson topple Reddick for Regular Season Championship? | Photo gallery • Turning Point: What’s next for Burton, and what a regular-season finale at Darlington highlights| Read article • Racing Insights: Full finishing order projections for Sunday’s crown jewel | Read article • Field of 16: How the playoff picture shakes out with one race left to decide grid | Read article • 36 for 36: Check out this week’s survivor pool picks | Read article
• Fantasy Fastlane: Points battles aplenty as regular season wraps | Photo gallery
• Fantasy Update: Bubba Wallace rising to the pressure at Darlington | Read article • NASCAR Classics: Head into the video vault with vintage Darlington replays | Read article • Paint Scheme Preview: Fresh designs to don at Darlington | Pick your favorite
Fast facts ⏩
Race-relevant statistics, brought to you by the experts at Racing Insights.
• The last eight races at Darlington were each won by a different driver. The Darlington record for most consecutive different winners is 11. • The eventual race winner has never finished worse than 10th in a stage in the 13 races at Darlington with stages. • The top three in the regular-season standings are separated by 18 points, the closest ever at this point in a season.
See where your favorite NASCAR Cup Series driver will pit for the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
When athletes have their backs pressed up against the wall, they oftentimes come up clutch.
After Harrison Burton upset the playoff bubble battle last weekend at Daytona, Michael Jordan texted Bubba Wallace — who had fallen below the playoff elimination line. It read, “Things you want more, cost more.” An emotional Wallace displayed full commitment during qualifying on Saturday at Darlington Raceway, slinging his car around the track to win his third career pole. This could set up Wallace’s “Game 7” moment.
NEXT IN LINE: Christopher Bell, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Carson Hocevar
RISING: As we noted earlier this week in Fastlane, Blaney’s stats aren’t exactly eye-catching at Darlington. The defending Cup champion has a best finish of eighth in 15 starts, with only two additional top 10s. Yet, the No. 12 car displayed potential race-contending speed during practice and qualifying, as NBC Sports broadcasters Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte labeled the No. 12 car among the pre-race favorites. I’m keeping Blaney off my lineup, but he moved up the pecking order.
It’s time to start taking Spire Motorsports and Carson Hocevar seriously. No matter the size of the venue, the No. 77 Chevrolet is consistently fast and leading the three-car team. Hocevar’s summer surge included consecutive top-10 finishes at Richmond and Michigan and 10 top 20s over the last 11 races. He will get a head start on track position at Darlington, qualifying second. It’s just the second time this year that Hocevar made the final round of qualifying.
FALLING: Entering Darlington 27 points below the elimination line, Ross Chastain likely needs a walk-off win to qualify for the playoffs. Qualifying 22nd might make the No. 1 team’s race strategy even easier by solely calling the race to win and not focusing on points. Unfortunately for Chastain, with the drastic tire wear, four tires are about a given whenever teams pit at Darlington. Maybe he can pull a Hail Mary like Regan Smith did in 2011 to win the Southern 500 on two tires? I’m not banking on it, though.
Entering the regular-season finale just 18 points out of the lead, Chase Elliott needed to maximize qualifying to allow an easier path to him to scoring points in the opening stage. The No. 9 team could still do that, but Elliott will take the green flag from 20th, while both Reddick and Larson made the final round of qualifying . Elliott was 25th on 10-lap averages in practice.
FEATURED MATCHUPS:
Harrison Burton vs. Carson Hocevar: Spire Motorsports continues to rise to the occasion, as Hocevar is having a solid rookie campaign. The No. 77 team has leaped 16 spots in the owner’s standings entering the regular season finale compared to this time last year. Meanwhile, Burton qualified 24th, one spot better than his season average and does have a top 10 finish at Darlington on his resume. I’ll take the No. 77 car all the way.
Bubba Wallace vs. Ross Chastain: Wallace has the outright speed to win the Southern 500. The only concern that I have is it could become win or bust if Buescher is having a solid race and that could lead to mistakes. Somehow, some way, the Phil Surgen-led No. 1 team will probably be in the picture at some point, but if we’re basing this solely on speed, Wallace was the best in class on Saturday.
Martin Truex Jr. vs. Ty Gibbs: Over the last 13 events, Truex only has a pair of top-10 finishes. Gibbs’ woes have been comparable, though he enters Darlington with consecutive top 10s. Going to flip to Truex entering Sunday, with the No. 19 Toyota cracking the top five in qualifying. Truex also has multiple Darlington wins, which could bode well for him this weekend.
Chris Buescher vs. Kyle Busch: Busch believes he has a car to work with this weekend, but the No. 8 car still qualified 17th. Both RFK Racing cars lacked pace in practice, though Buescher rebounded in qualifying to make the final round of qualifying. Buescher is in my lineup and was in contention to win the last two Darlington races, so I’ll stick with the No. 17 car.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Offering up a fist pump and big smile, Bubba Wallace claimed perhaps the most consequential pole position of his young career — turning in the fastest lap in the final round of NASCAR Cup Series qualifying for Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Wallace’s 167.143 mph lap in the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota Saturday afternoon puts him out front to start the 500-miler at the historic 1.366-mile Darlington track. And it’s a good beginning for a big night. Wallace currently is just one position below the playoff line — trailing RFK Racing driver Chris Buescher by 21 points entering this last race to set the 16-driver Cup Series Playoff grid.
“Looking at us coming in, being on the bubble, 21 points out, a ton of pressure, well, I think the pressure just switched,’’ said the 30-year-old North Carolinian Wallace, who has four top-10 finishes in his last four races at the track famously nicknamed “Too Tough Too Tame.”
“We’re not here to mess around. I showed up with a more open and calm demeanor, free and relaxing demeanor, but at the same time, I don’t want to be messed with.
“So it’s a fine balance you have to walk.’’
Series rookie 21-year-old Carson Hocevar will start alongside Wallace on the front row – his best career start in the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe will start his No. 14 Ford third, with Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. rounding out the top five.
Wallace’s 23XI Racing teammate, championship leader Tyler Reddick, will roll off sixth in the No. 45 Toyota. He holds a 17-point advantage over the defending Southern 500 champ Larson for the Regular Season Championship that will be decided Sunday night. Larson’s Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott is only 18 points behind Reddick and will start 20th.
Reigning series champion Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney, Hendrick’s William Byron, JGR’s Christopher Bell, and RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher round out the top 10.
Buescher currently holds a 21-point advantage over Wallace for that 16th and final playoff position. After a top-10 showing in practice, Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain will roll off 22nd on the grid. He’s just behind Wallace in the standings, 27 points behind Buescher.
“The first round, I thought we did a good job; the team did a good job of making adjustments for the second round,’’ said Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Ford. “We were working hard to try to make three and four better because we left a lot on the table there, but then I ended up messing up Turn 1 a little bit. It is still a good start for us.”
Wallace said that he was a little angry at himself after a sixth-place effort in practice, saying he had wanted to “make a statement” and felt he ultimately did so in qualifying.
“Anything can happen,” Wallace said of his playoff potential. “We saw that last week. So we have to run our own race and it makes it a lot easier for us. I have the first pit stall, and as long as we executive and make the right calls and do great on pit road. All I want for every single person on this team, including myself, is to go to bed tomorrow night and know we did everything we could, we did all we could. Maybe it was good enough. Maybe it wasn’t. That’s the lottery ticket. We’ll find out after tomorrow night’s race.”
Four-time Darlington winner Denny Hamlin, one of Wallace’s 23XI Racing team owners, said he understands the pressure Wallace is facing trying to race his way into the playoffs in the regular season finale.
“It’s tough because I think if you’ve got pressure in race 26, then I think that we’ve had 25 other opportunities where the pressure should have been the same,” said Hamlin, who will start 14th Sunday. “So just, what I’ve been preaching is that every race counts.
“You have to bring it every single week. You cannot take one week off in this thing, especially if you aren’t winning. You have to be a top-10 guy every single week. So that’s really, really hard to sustain. I still think Bubba is still on the rise, he’s still getting better, and he’s taken strides over where he was just two years ago. So I’m really happy with the result either way, but I know he’s going to give his 100% effort.”
Jones fastest in practice
Two-time Southern 500 winner Erik Jones topped the practice leaderboard in the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota at 166.461 mph.
JGR’s Denny Hamlin (166.146 mph) toppled in at second fastest and is looking for a fifth Darlington win.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (166.118 mph), Ross Chastain (165.989 mph) and William Byron (165.760 mph) rounded out the top five.
Bubba Wallace (165.386 mph), Tyler Reddick (165.320 mph), John Hunter Nemechek (165.031 mph), Carson Hocevar (164.860 mph) and Kyle Larson (164.832 mph) completed the top 10.
During the Group A session, Stenhouse spun exiting Turn 4 as his No. 47 Chevrolet slid down the track. Then, Stenhouse hit the inside wall with the nose and suffered front-end damage.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Chris Buescher entered last year’s Labor Day event at Darlington Raceway as a three-time winner, steaming into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a flood of momentum. This season, his arrival at the treacherous, egg-shaped oval is a much different scenario.
Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) situates as this year’s regular-season finale, and Buescher’s win column is a bare cupboard. The RFK Racing driver sits just 21 points above the dividing line that separates the provisional 16-driver playoff field from those who won’t be eligible for the Cup Series championship at the end of the 500-mile classic.
The year-over-year contrast isn’t lost on Buescher, who noted this season’s number of playoff-clinching winners — 13 — as another surprising factor for his current plight.
“In a way, I guess,” Buescher said when asked if he was surprised by his current spot. “We’re third of the cars without a win on points. I think that’s probably the biggest surprise is that there have been as many different winners this year as there have been. On the flip side, we’ve had a lot of speed this year. We’ve been really close at a lot of races. We just haven’t sealed the deal. That’s been very frustrating at times because that was one of the the bigger goals we had on this season was to make sure that we fired off with the potential that we had around this time last year. And we did. It was good to go to a race track and have speed at types of race tracks that, honestly, we just haven’t been very good at in the past. And we were good at short tracks and intermediates and road courses are still really strong for us. All those things were going well.
“We just had a couple of runner-ups and very near-misses. So I think that it’s been a great year, we just don’t have any trophies on it yet. We didn’t expect to be in this position, and unfortunately, it’s where we’re at, but I am pretty confident in what we’re able to do at Darlington and what we’ve had as an organization this year at RFK that as long as we do everything we need to, we’re going to be in good shape.”
Protecting that points advantage will be a premium at one of NASCAR’s most demanding tracks, but Buescher has enjoyed a measure of solid performance in his most recent efforts here. Buescher placed his No. 17 Ford third in last year’s Southern 500, and he was in victory contention in the Goodyear 400 back in May at the 1.366-mile track before a scrape with Tyler Reddick thwarted his afternoon and knocked both from the running.
The standings will be a point of awareness on Sunday, but Buescher hopes a crown-jewel win will be the playoff springboard that the No. 17 team needs.
“I had a chance to win this race last time we were here and ended up in one of my less highlight-worthy moments,” said Buescher, who seethed as he confronted Reddick on pit road post-race in May. “For us, it’s how do we come in and win this race? How do we be in contention to win this race? I think I just don’t like to be a points racer. I’m aware of our situation. I feel like we can come out here and do what we’ve been doing every week, bringing fast race cars to the track. But a lot of times, I feel like we’ve had speed to compete for wins and then days that we need to execute a little bit better all around. For us, that’s kind of the same thing we’ve got looking at us for this go.
“We’ll pay attention. It’s something we started probably around Pocono time, just aware of the cars we’re racing if they have catastrophic or bad days. Just know what that means for us. And if you do have to be a little more aware of your situation, we can pay attention to that. But ultimately I want to be in contention to win this race and close the deal out that way and not worry about any of the rest.”
Buescher has come close to winning this year — at some points, agonizingly so. Besides his Darlington downturn in the spring, he has been a runner-up twice in the regular season, including a sliver-thin 0.001-second defeat to Kyle Larson at Kansas Speedway in the closest finish in Cup Series history.
Those close calls have stung, Buescher says, but he’s not spending that reflection by fretting about the what-ifs.
“We’re on this weekend,” Buescher said. “All that is stuff that hurts and will when you do stop to look back at it, but ultimately it’s not anything that’s changing our situation right now and would really be a distraction at this point. There’s no changing it, right? So definitely things that you look back on, and we’ll clean up as a team. Things I can clean up as a driver and do differently. And then just situations that certainly could have gone better. We’re focused on this weekend now.”
